Eight Interludes (review)

REVIEWS Cervantes, Miguel de. Eight Interludes. Translated and edited by Dawn L. Smith. The Everyman Library. London: J. M. Dent/Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1996. xl + 179 pp. $7.95. I can think of few texts more difficult to translate than Cervantes's Entremeses . Even modern-day Spaniards have great difficulty understanding them, as evidenced by the profusion offootnotes accompanying most modern editions. Much oftheir humor derives from their notoriously slangy language (and nothing is more ephemeral than slang), and from the contrasts among different levels of language—such as the technical jargon used in different professions, the colorful expressions used by underworld characters , and the inarticulate ranting of semiliterate peasants—as well as from ingenious puns, hilarious malapropisms, and constant references to long vanished customs, games, proverbs, etc. Dawn Smith has succeeded remarkably well in rendering all this in flowing, easily understood English, while at the same time carefully annotating the original references. For example , in Smith's translation of The WidowedPimp the character Pizpita refers to Repulida as "Madam Dullwit and Lady Worse-than-Useless" (34). A note explains that in the original "Pizpita calls her 'Doña Mari-Bobales' and 'monda-níspolas'. The first name includes the word 'boba'—'idiot'; the second refers to the superfluous act ofpeeling a plum ('níspola' is the fruit ofthe medlar tree)." This is a good example ofthe difficult choices required of the translator. 'Monda-níspolas' is an ambiguous insult, and might refer more to the prostitute Repulida's extreme (and ridiculous) fastidiousness (also suggested in her name, which Smith translates in an earlier note as "Repolished") than to her uselessness. By retaining the original in the note, Smith gives the reader the opportunity to choose for her/himself. Smith's translation of Cervantes's Interludes not only makes delightful reading but would surely be effective—and very funny—in performance. Many of the superficial details that seventeenth-century audiences would have found especially humorous have lost their meaning and relevance over time; yet hu93 94BCom, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Summer 1998) man beings today remain as enthralled by vanity, avarice, lust, and greed as ever; and Smith's rendering ofthe Interludes highlights those aspects, accurately conveying Cervantes's indulgent portrayal ofhuman foibles in a way that present-day readers and audiences can easily relate to. Doing this naturally required taking some liberties with the original; for the most part, I think this is justifiable, but once in a great while, I believe Smith goes too far. I find it extremely odd, for example, that in The Marvelous Puppet Show she translates the Latin phrase in corbona when Chirinos asks Chanfalla: "Is the money in the bag?" without even noting that the original was in Latin. This is a particularly significant reference to Matthew 27:6, when the chiefpriests commented that the money they had paid Judas for betraying Christ, and which he had returned to them, "non licet eos mittere in corbonam: quia pretium sanguinis est" ("cannot be put into the temple fund; it is blood money"). Furthermore, the word corbonam is itself a latinization of the Hebrew korban ("sacrifice"). I would argue that the implied comparison ofthe two tricksters to the chiefpriests, and ofthe money the peasants paid them for their performance to the price paid Judas for betraying Christ, is highly significant in the interpretation ofthe interlude. The book opens with an eight-page chronology of Cervantes's life and times, a very useful aid to the reader in placing the events of his life in the context of contemporary history and literary and artistic achievements. A novel—and very effective—feature of the chronology is that Smith gives Cervantes's age for each year in which she lists noteworthy happenings. In her introduction—after a brief and circumspect overview of Cervantes's biography , in which she confines herself to reporting documented facts and avoids the sometimes reckless speculation with which many scholars have attempted to fill the yawning gaps between the known events—she gives an excellent summary of the early history of public theater in Spain, focusing on the development ofthe genre known as the entremés or interlude. Smith cogently argues that Cervantes...